DAY ONE: Kicking off on a Sunday did impart a slightly more relaxed atmosphere than is expected for the rest of the show, which ends on Wednesday, but the exhibition was well attended and the exhibitors PKN spoke to were already pleased with the numbers and the quality of the enquiries, taking this as a positive sign for business in the days to come.
This is foodpro's first time in Melbourne, and exhibition manager Peter Petherick, of Diversified Communications, told PKN that now that the event has been introduced to Victoria, he believed a whole new audience would be keen to attend the next foodpro event in 2017, whether it's staged in Sydney or Melbourne.
A number of exhibitors have come to foodpro having recently exhibited at interpack in May, among them Trepko and Zip-Pak.
First-time foodpro exhibitor Trepko UK, specialist in forming, filling and sealing solutions, says the company sees “tremendous potential for business in both the Australian and New Zealand markets, especially in the dairy sector”.
“We already have some penetration in this market but there's definitely going to be a much stronger push to build our presence here, in line with our global expansion strategy,” Trepko sales engineer John Pickering says.
“We've seen strong interest in all our equipment, but in particular our FFS and rotary fillers,” he says.
Visiting from the UK, Trepko sales engineer John Pickering and controls engineer Kevin Everett.
For Zip-Pak, foodpro is a great opportunity to present brand new closure technology introduced for the first time at interpack in May, including the MX12 TD, a transverse direction (TD) zip application which incorporates Zip-Pak's well established Vector technology. Vector is a proprietary self-sealing matrix closure system that closes securely without precisely lining up the opposing segments. Because Vector closes on itself and has no end termination, it represents an easy-to-use alternative to traditional zipper profiles. The MX12 TD is the smallest transverse direction zip that can fully seal to itself.
Glenn Woodworth, sales agent for Zip-Pak in Australia and New Zealand, says that this development makes putting a zip on packaging easy. He explains that, as with other TD zips, the MX12 TD can be inserted at the front end of the VFFS or horizontal flow wrapping line but the difference is this zip does not need to be sealed in line (see diagram below). This speeds up the process (MX12 TDcan be applied at a rate of 80 packs per minute) and will save materials, Woodworth says.
